


can't breathe

by kallliope



Series: kanej minifics [4]
Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 06:11:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9165535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kallliope/pseuds/kallliope
Summary: After another successful operation, Kaz meets Inej one more time at the Slat before she goes off to ruin slavers on the Wraith.Both of their words get swallowed up.





	

Their teeth clacked and both of them choked on each others’ breath. The action was messy and broken, and yet neither of them pulled away. 

This was drowning, Kaz thought madly. This was the ocean, and Inej’s lips were the waves that crashed against him, pulling him away from Ketterdam, away from his reason, his sense. He sensed the water lapping against his lungs again, but instead of tearing himself away this time, he put a shaking, gloveless hand onto Inej’s face tentatively.

Kaz heard Inej draw in a sharp breath, but she only stepped forward, sealing their lips together even further. 

The water was gone and his lungs were on fire now. The glorious agony spread to a blaze in his chest, his heart trying to fan out the flames with its frantic beating. And yet the torment made him more desperate, more starved, made his mouth open and stutter out her name for the first time like a whisper of devotion. 

And when he heard his own name sighed back to him like a benediction, Kaz felt  _free_. 

* * *

 

She was back on the wire again, dangling on one foot with the rose petal crown collapsing on her head. The petals brushed past her nose and cheeks, but one of them decided to settle stubbornly on her mouth. Inej stayed still; one huff of breath would send it spinning away towards the earth. 

Then her name rushed in her ears like an unanticipated gale, and the tent melted away to the colorless walls of the Slat, the rose petal to Kaz’s lips. In her mind’s eye, she wobbled on the wire, causing the crowd underneath to gasp. Her lungs tried to take her last breath of air before she’d hurtle to the ground, but Kaz’s mouth on her own prevented any hope of breathing. 

Kaz’s fingers slid across her face and down her neck with the barest of pressure. Inej felt the rose petals grazing her skin with every hesitant touch, dancing away as soon as they touched her. He was going to make her fall; every press of his lips to hers made the floorboards rush underneath her dizzyingly. 

She heard her name whispered again, almost worshipful, and the sound of it made her eyes fly open and made her press her lips closer to Kaz’s own. The wire was thinning, she knew, but she refused to stop when Kaz breathed her name like a sacred blessing. 

Inej heard the wire snap in her imagination, and the horrified screams of the audience below as she fell to her death, but refused to flinch. If she needed evidence her saints received her, that was already in front of her in the form of a sinner gasping her name out in her mouth, with enough reverence to send the walls of the depraved Ketterdam tumbling down.

**Author's Note:**

> Message me on Tumblr!
> 
> inejjghafas.tumblr.com


End file.
